Death is not the end! From the new robot Walt Disney to Mountainhead, movies are fuelled by immortality

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Transhumanism has long propelled films from Metropolis to The Matrix. But Jesse Armstrong’s billionaire satire isn’t sci-fi fantasy. Nor is the ‘robotic Grampa’ Disney’s granddaughter so despises For years, the world’s most perfect urban myth was this: Walt Disney’s body was cryogenically frozen at the moment of death, waiting for technology to advance enough to bring him back to life. Started by a National Spotlite reporter who claimed to have sneaked into a hospital in 1967, only to be confronted by the sight of Disney suspended in a cryogenic cylinder, the myth prevailed because it was such a good fit. Disney – and therefore Walt Disney himself – was the smiling face of rigidly controlled joy, radiating a message of mandatory fun that is magical when you are a child and increasingly sinister as you age. This policy (essentially “enjoy yourself or else”) suits the idea of cryogenic preservation. After all, if you have the ego to successfully enforce a blanket emotion as a company m...
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Olivia Hussey obituary

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Actor who was catapulted to fame as one of the teen stars of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet in 1968

When Franco Zeffirelli’s film version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was released in 1968, it made the two lead actors, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, into instant stars. Hussey, who has died aged 73, later said that “while it brought me fame – for whatever that’s worth – and glamour, it also thrust me into a spotlight that, while intoxicating, was at times too bright and too revealing”.

At the time of the filming in Italy of Romeo and Juliet, Whiting was 17 years old, Hussey 16 (in the 1936 Hollywood version, the lead actors were 43 and 34). Zeffirelli was determined that his star-crossed lovers be credible teenagers. In his autobiography, Zeffirelli remembered that he was not immediately impressed with Hussey, saying “she was unfortunately overweight, clumsy-looking and bit her nails constantly”. But later he took a second look, and found that “she was a new woman: she had lost weight dramatically. Her magnificent bone structure was becoming apparent, with those wide expressive eyes and her whole angular self. She was now the real Juliet, a gawky colt of a girl waiting for life to begin.”

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